Power Consumption & Temperatures

Power consumption levels of the HIS Radeon HD 5850 were very low, as we expected, using around 40 watts less under full load when compared to the Radeon HD 4870 and over 70 watts less than the HD 5870. The card used even less power that Nvidia's GeForce GTX 260 despite being considerably faster.

When compared to the GeForce GTX 285, which was also slower in almost every test, the HIS Radeon HD 5850 consumed 18% less power under load and 9% less at idle. Out of the 9 graphics cards we tested, the Radeon HD 5850 ranked within the top four in terms of performance, while consuming the least amount of power.

The HIS Radeon HD 5850 still managed to get quite hot under load, reaching 83 degrees. We should note that even at this temperature it was considerably quieter than the GeForce GTX 285/295 and Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics cards.